Answers to Your Questions

At the beginning of last week, I asked for your questions and received more than a hundred! As promised, here’s a first round of answers to those queries, and, not surprisingly, I think there’s some terrific material in here for everyone who reads SEOmoz or works in the SEO or startup community.

The SEOmoz brand is one of – if not the strongest in the SEO industry.  I wondered if you have you ever considered “franchising” the SEOmoz name to where you would literally train companies to deliver SEOmoz branded, SEO/M services in specific geographies, using best-in-class business practices?

We have certainly discussed it, and I think it’s something that might be on the radar in the next 18-24 months. Specifically, with some of the tools and products we have launching, we’re of a mind that many SEOs, even the most savvy ones, will need a bit of training and personal access in order to be able to fully leverage them for the benefit of their clients, so certification of some type might indeed be a direction we take.

I have very often come across questions based on UK specific SEO – will we see a UK focus in the upcoming articles / blog posts or maybe UK specific premium content?

You certainly will! Will’s already started to address some of that on the blog, and I expect we’ll see even more in the months to come. We’re also looking at globalizing/localizing SEOmoz PRO and the free content on the site into multiple languages and countries next year. Our hope is that by 2010, you can read SEOmoz in Spanish, German, Japanese, Chinese and French.

If there were other regions that would benefit from such local SEO knowledge and content, would you consider partnering with them either via the methods that Sean mentioned or any other?

We certainly will be looking at partnerships as a way to extend the brand into local markets. We’re not nearly egotistic enough to think that we could create flawless local content ourselves without help from the people on the ground in those countries and regions.

After the Jason Gambert scandal in terms of trademarking SEO “with the goal of standardizing it” (sarcastic tone on my end), do you actually believe that there should be certain standards and ethics in SEO that are more established than Bruce Clay’s code of ethics? If so, do you believe these standards require expert education and certification? Do you see SEOmoz professional program going towards a standards training program?

Probably not. In my opinion, SEO doesn’t need regulation or a code of ethics anymore than programming or usability consulting or bird-watching. The market forces should do a very good job of ensuring that players who stick to best practices rise up in the SERPs and in the eyes of the wider web/client community, and those who abuse the system are penalized by the engines and through reputation.

How does your beard influence your SEO powers?

I’ll give you a serious answer on this one, shockingly 🙂 The beard helps me look 10 years older, which is an essential quality since without it, I appear to be about 22 (I’ll be 29 in a month, just for the record). Looking older helps with perceived authority and lets me be taken a bit more seriously in conference and presentation environments, particularly when the crowd isn’t familiar with SEO.

Hmm.. I’d say one of the most interesting questions facing us today (beyond the beard question) is how SEO will become a mature industry. From discussions over the various forums, conferences and sites that people prefer or have loyalty to – unto whether any “official” bodies exist for SEO qualifications… Where do you see the future of SEO – will we merge with PPC, Social and Brand marketing online? Or will these become strictly silo’d professions?

I’d find it hard to imagine that the scenarios must be either/or. I look at the greater world of marketing/advertising where you see a huge range of specialists (copywriters, headline writers, ad designers) and a great number of companies and individuals who play at Jack-of-all-Trades, too.

Beyond that… my personal one would be… where did the ‘moz name come from? and will distilled play cricket with moz next time there over? or would moz insist on some strange new fangled game like baseball?!

I appropriated the “moz” name from the Mozilla foundation, with their original ethos of being open, free, and community-based. When SEOmoz launched, it was a not-for-profit blog and tools site where everything was freely available, and though the business model has changed, that mentality sticks with us.

As for Distilled playing Cricket…. Not bloody likely. At least, not in this weather. Seattle has been 50 degrees and raining for the last three days, so Will, Tom and I have spent most of our time in the Whiteboard Friday meeting room, going over new ideas for the site 🙂

What top SEO tip do you keep to yourself and haven’t revealed to the wider SEO community?

There are honestly not very many that haven’t been shared in one way or another (a lot come through the PRO tips). The only ones I really keep private are those that involve specific sites or experiences recounted from a source that wants things to remain quiet. However, watch this coming week’s Whiteboard “Give It Up” Friday – there are a few things like that which don’t make their way around the SEO world much.

Do you think search engine algorithms might move away from inbound links as their key measurement of a site’s relevance (e.g., towards usage data)? How might this affect SEO?

I think there may be a much stronger balance as search engines learn how to use and interpret that data reliably, but no, I think that links will remain one of the strongest signals for at least the next 5-6 years, if not long after that. Despite the occasional miscues, the engines have achieved remarkable things using link analysis, and there’s been no evidence to suggest it will fall apart anytime soon.

Do you ever feel that our industry (and in fact the more general web sector) is awash with too much testosterone (from both sexes)? I sometimes feel like there’s a real macho culture, and that it’s a big turn off.

I’m not sure about machismo, but there is a great deal of immaturity. I suppose it’s to be expected in a young industry with so many young players communicating over an impersonal medium (the web). Brent Csutoras did a great video with me at SMX Advanced on the topic of desiring fame and recognition above all else, and thus letting other, more important traits fall by the wayside.

I can certainly say that last summer, when SEOmoz was constantly getting negative blog posts and Sphinn threads written about us, I took it really hard. I hadn’t felt the brunt of a critical attack in that manner before and couldn’t understand why people (who I thought were friends) wouldn’t support us. Since then, I think my attitude has matured a little, and I’ve grown a thicker skin, and sadly, a more jaded outlook. Overall, though, my feeling is that drama is unavoidable and people need that conflict to stay interested and intrigued by the community. It’s tragic, certainly, but it’s not something I can change, so I have to learn to live with it.

What do you think will be the biggest curve ball (challenge, surprise, etc.) thrown by Google this year?

I suspect that at some point we’re going to see more effort and publicity thrown at Knols and that Google will start to keep a lot of the search query traffic on content properties it controls. It may seem evil, but I can’t imagine sitting on a board of directors at Google and rejecting at least some publisher-side ideas for the company. There’s just too much money in it for the shareholders, and that’s who Google has to serve.

If you could ask our friends at Google for one thing this year (that they also might conceivably do), what would it be?

I think the creation of a robots.txt parameter or meta tag to allow webmasters to discount or ignore URL parameters (like Yahoo! does with their dynamic URL rewriting tool) would be at the top of my list. It’s been a problem with nearly every site I’ve consulted on, and constantly comes up as an issue with conditional re-directing vs. cloaking and how to harness link juice from duplicate content pages, etc. Of course, I asked for this when I spoke at Google Mountain View last summer and then heard from Adam Lasnik in Sydney this Spring that Google didn’t consider it important, so it’s sadly not as high on their list of to-do’s as it is mine.

My question is “If you were going to offer Local SEO services, what business model would you choose?” Or in other words, what do you think is the best way to market SEO services to the growing local search market?

I think you have two real options – offer high-end, custom, boutique services that spend a lot of time on all the issues or build a scalable, low cost option that gets companies started down the local SEO path. Personally, I’m more of a boutique kind of guy, but I’d certainly agree that there are options on the other side of the path that would be valuable and legitimate, even if it’s just helping people with Google local registration and inclusion in a few local directories/guides.

Have you ever used blackhat techniques in order to improve your client’s ranking ? and which one ? think hard…

I believe Google considers link buying to be black hat, and we’ve certainly done that for our clients. We’ve also used some cloaking and conditional re-direction, but they were for very white-hat reasons, so I’d say even if Google looked really hard, they’d probably agree that it was the best solution (assuming it wasn’t Matt Cutts on a panel in front of thousands of bloggers).

From an SEO perspective what are the most important technical aspects to have in mind when building, optimizing, promoting and tracking a site?

 Wow… I’d say this question can’t really be answered in the space of my response here. However, I did write a 30+ page paper on the subject called “The Illustrated Guide to Building a Search-Friendly Website.” It’s currently PRO-only, but if you’re looking for a free resource, this section from the Beginner’s Guide might not be a bad place to start.

Do you think there would be any financial benefit for all of the SEOmoz staff to work remote? Cut down on office expenses?

I think by definition, there would be a financial benefit of not having office expenses. However, with the culture and team we want to build, operating remotely isn’t in the stars for us. We might save on expenses, but we’d lose productivity and relationships and those would take a toll on the quality of work we output. 

Are you glad that you took the VC funding? Has it been working out well for you so far?

I’m actually surprised to be saying this, but yes, I’m pretty unequivocally happy that we took the VC money. We have our super-top-secret project that we think will change the world of SEO coming out in October, and if it weren’t for the investment, it couldn’t have been achieved. We’ve been able to bring on some spectacularly talented, driven people to help us out and think beyond where next month’s paycheck is coming from. Michelle, our board member from Ignition, whom many people got to see speak at SMX Advanced and met later on at our booth, is a great asset, an extremely supportive partner, and has been everything from friend to consultant to therapist over the past 6 months. I don’t think I could recommend VC to everyone – not at all – but for us it’s been a remarkably good fit. 

If you had to start over today with nothing except the knowledge in your head – no connections, no reputation, no investment money, nothing but a computer and an internet connection – and only the money left over from your day job at McDonald’s – a maximum of $300 accumulated by living on leftover fries and selling blood – how would you leverage that meager beginning into SEO world domination – or a decent living? Assume that self employment is a major part of the goal. In 150 words or less.

I would:

1. Apply for jobs working in the search world, to help fund my personal project
2. Start writing and contributing to major sites & communities in the search world
3. I actually have an idea for the next site/business/project I want to build (not-very-SEO related), so I’d develop those ideas out to wireframe status
4. Leverage new connections and finances to get an early version of the site built
5. Probably end up spending the $300 on food and bus rides to my interviews until I could land a job

Look at that – only 90 words!

Some websites improve their ranking by using Blackhat SEO techniques. How do I identify whether my site has been promoted by ethical SEO techniques or unethical SEO techniques?

The first thing I’d do is give the site itself a thorough review, looking for things like:

• Cloaking
• Hidden text
• Keyword stuffing
• Dodgy redirects
• Spammy internal linking
• Selling links on the site

Then, I’d look carefully through the backlinks of the domain, using Yahoo! Site Explorer (and probably some more sophisticated link queries that included keywords, anchor text, removing sites where you have tons of links, etc.) just to get a more detailed link profile. When researching backlinks, you want to be careful of links that are paid, those that come from other sites you own/control, or those that are part of partnership arrangements. They’re not all paid, and they won’t all necessarily hurt you (yes, even the paid links, unless they’re in an obvious network/location), but you want to have the awareness of what “SEO” might have been done on the site prior to your engagement.

Do you use the word “Howdy” in real life as much as in Whiteboard Friday videos? 😉

Thinking about it for a sec, I really don’t. I guess that’s something that’s unique to my WB Friday self.

Does your day still look like this? Or has it changed with your growing public role? We already know how Fluxx spends his day, but how about the other people on your team? Is their time typically split like this suggestion? Or is this a better illustration of a typical SEOmoz day?

My days are pretty different than they use to be. I have a lot more management issues that I need to deal with, and a split between answering emails, answering Q+A, blogging (which I don’t get to do as much of as I once did), crafting presentations (which I’ve been doing a lot of for conferences and training seminars), and internal meetings. A typical SEOmoz day is probably a bit less diverse, at least for each individual person, as we’re doing a lot more specialization of tasks as we grow.

I’d particularly like to know what tools/techniques you use to help you time manage your tasks better?

Ouch… That could be a long list. Let’s see, I personally use:

• A voicemail message on my phone that insists I don’t take voice messages but that text or email are both more effective ways to reach me.
• A Twitter account that only follows a very small number of people
• My Firefox sidebar to read on demand only – I don’t do RSS, and just go to a few aggregation sites and favorite blogs as I have time (maybe 2-3X per 7-10 days).
• Last-In, First-Out (LIFO) email policy, such that some emails receive a very fast reply and others can take weeks to get through. I try to use the policy of answering anything that takes less than 3 minutes immediately, but with travel and conferences and meetings, that can mean a whole day just answering 60-120 second emails. Thank goodness for weekends, or I’d never get through my email.
• An HTC “Tilt” cellphone which, as a phone, is awful – really and truly terrible, but for email and texting works very well. I was going to get an iPhone, but I can type responses on the Tilt much faster, so that ended up being the way to go.
• Macromedia Flash to build out mockups of new tools and new pages for the site

As a company, we use:

• A program called FogBugz to manage customer service and site maintenance issues
• Google Hosted Applications platform for email, sharing of documents, & calendars
• OpenOffice Presenter for crafting presentations (just have to remember to save as “PPT” or no one else can open it)
• Microsoft Office, Adobe Photoshop & Fireworks, FileZilla, and a few others I can’t recall immediately.

What does it take for a company to get on the Recommended List? What do you look for? Impressive client list? Interactions with SEOmoz? Conference panel appearances? An authoritative blog? And along with that – how often to do you add new companies to the list?

It’s really a combination of all of those things. Typically, it starts when I meet someone in person at a conference, event or through a consulting gig. We’ll spend some time together, maybe have some shared meals and experiences, etc. I find that I can tell a tremendous amount about a person’s trustworthiness and character from just a 30-45 minute interaction. From there, I’ll often get to see some of their work – client projects, blog posts, white papers, recommendations for a site and/or performance during a panel/presentation. If I’ve been truly impressed by them, I’ll ask them to shoot me an email if they’d like to be on the recommended list.

I’ve probably asked about 10 people in the last 6 months, and only 2 of them have taken me up on it. I do get some anonymous pitches sometimes, but only one ever has been sufficient enough to have me add them, and even then, I had to check in with references that I already knew and trusted.

We don’t take the recommended list lightly at all – you have to earn your way on there. But, because we don’t take kickbacks or accept any financial remuneration for the forwarded business, it’s a list that businesses seeking SEO services know will provide great companies and people.

That’s all for now. There’s probably another 30+ questions that deserve addressing, but I’ll have to save those for later this week. If you have follow-ups about any of these, feel free to leave them in the comments below and I’ll reply in-line.

Thanks for the great questions, everyone!